


Hearts in the Bottom of a Box

by MooseFeels



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Domestic!AU, valentines day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-27
Updated: 2013-01-27
Packaged: 2017-11-27 01:35:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/656560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MooseFeels/pseuds/MooseFeels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>prompt by whovianfighter- Dean/Cas Valentines Dinner. Something goes horribly wrong...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hearts in the Bottom of a Box

            Dean normally didn't do this kind of thing. Hell, he usually made fun of other people for doing this kind of thing. Mocked the bouquets, the chocolates, the teddy bears, the dinner reservations.

            And then in late January, it hit him like a train.

            They were in bed- the low, small bed they bought cheap from Goodwill. It was cold, and they were curled tightly around each other. The blankets were second hand and scratchy. The apartment was small and unfurnished. Castiel's hair was soft and his skin was warm and he smelled like cheap soap and spilled coffee and home.

            Dean then realized that he owed Castiel a proper Valentine's Day.

            He started spending the time between his shift at the warehouse and the auto-shop at the library, looking up recipies and squirrelling away the money he would use for lunch to buy flowers and wine. He started grabbing the more solid pieces of wood to make a table and chairs for them. He started eyeing discarded Christmas trees for the lights.

            Very slowly, Dean began to construct a dinner.

            Dean had never had very much money. Growing up on the road and living more or less illegally for most of his life meant that he didn't have anything saved and his roots had long ago disappeared. Castiel didn't seem to mind, though. He picked up work at a coffeeshop and contributed to rent and cooked at night when Dean came home, exhausted. Held him warm against the cold they could not quite afford to keep out. Cas was good to him, for some damnfool inexplicable reason, and sometimes, Dean could not help but feel he was bad for Cas.

            Castiel was taking a long shift on the fourteenth, and Dean was taking a shift off to bring the plan into fruition. As he sat on the floor and paitiently began to put the table together, he thought about how strange it was to see their apartment in the daylight. The tiny space seemed much bigger and much emptier without the yellow/orange light of cheap lightbulbs.

            The table had a wicked wobble, the legs uneven. Dean frowned. He slid a magazine under one of them, and it stabilized slightly. He made a note to bring home a saw one day to even them out.

            He carefully strung the Christmas lights over the table, checking to make sure the bulbs worked. They hung in a wide halo above the table in a way Dean hoped was vaguely romantic.

            They didn't have a vase, so Dean used the tallest glass he could find to put the quickly wilting daisies on the center of the table.

            And then he started work on dinner.

            Dean had always had to know how to cook a bit. While living from hotel to hotel meant limited resources as far as ingredients or kitchens went, throwing something together was usually cheaper than going out. He knew how to boil water and chop and onion and peel garlic.

            The whole, raw chicken on the counter was probably one of the most terrifying sights of his life, however.

            He turned on the oven. He washed his hands. He pulled out the baking sheet and the aluminum foil. The recipe online said he could make an improvised roasting rack out of a coil of aluminum foil, and he worked quickly to make a crinkled snake that would sit under the bird.  He minced a few cloves of garlic and mixed it into a stick of softened butter, also adding lemon zest, salt, and pepper. And then, knowing he could delay no longer, he opened the bird.

            The skin was cold and clammy, and he quickly rinsed it under the faucet. He laid the bird down on top of his improvised cooling rack and sighed heavily.

            "Man up, Winchester," he murmured as he gently worked his hand into the space between the breast and the skin, separating them so he could work the compound butter into the flesh.

            It was cold, messy work, and he was glad when it was done. He grabbed half of a lemon and inserted it into the cavity and then washed his hands.

            "You've always been good at knots," he said. "You can truss a chicken."

            He grabbed the butcher's twine he'd bought especially to do this, and nervously cut off a large section.

            He slid the twine under the tailbone and crossed it over the legs. Looping around them once more, he pulled the twine tight, sealing the cavity and forcing the body of the bird to puff up and out. He then carefully looped the twine over the body of the chicken and under the wings, flipping it upside down in the process so that now the neckbone faced him. He looped the twine around the neckbone- "Once, twice, three times a chicken," the video had instructed- and pulled tight until it popped. Dean could not help but smile. "Not so tough, are you?" he said, cocking an eyebrow.

            The chicken did nothing.

            Dean tucked the wingtips and pushed the breastbone  in towards the legs before he scattered salt and pepper on the top and slid the bird into the hot oven. "Four hundred fifty degrees," Dean murmured, washing his hands and starting on the vegetables.

 

            Castiel knew that Valentines Day was important for people, but he and Dean weren't that kind of couple. They weren't the type for big, grand gestures or conventional romance. They were the type that said things without words, the type that had quiet dates. So when he came into the apartment, footsore and feeling like curling up in bed, he was thoroughly surprised to see a crooked table with a bedraggled bouquet and Christmas lights and the kitchen filled with smoke.

            "Dean!" Castiel shouted, dashing around the apartment to open windows while Dean wrangled with something in the oven.

            "Cas! Shit!" He replied, coughing around the black smoke.

            There was a mad scramble to get the smoke out before the alarm went off, and once it looked like something resembling sanity had been restored, Castiel heaved a sigh. "What happened?" He asked.

            "I," Dean started, sheepish, "I wanted to give you a good Valentines," he muttered. "I didn't turn the oven down." He rubbed the back of his neck, clearly embarrassed. "There are some vegetables and stuff that are okay, though."

            Castiel smiled. "I'll go get changed," he said. "Have to get ready for my date, hot stuff."

            Dean felt his heart skip a beat, and then he darted back into the kitchen to start plating dinner.


End file.
